This is a request for funds to purchase an inverted Zeiss LSM710 confocal microscope to augment a 5-year old upright Leica TCS SP2 confocal microscope that will remain in the same shared imaging facility. These instruments will be managed under MIF-Biotech, one of two Microscopy and Imaging Facilities (MIF), whose main function is to serve central campus confocal imaging needs. The existing Leica SP2 still functions adequately for many users, but another instrument is necessary. The MIF facility, like many across the country, are seeing an increased demand for live cell and tissue imaging, and currently the system is so overbooked that MIF-Biotech staff needed to implement complicated scheduling rules limiting usage to three hour blocks of time, which are inadequate for researchers wanting to carry out time lapse imaging and photobleaching studies. The new instrument will also enable new capabilities for these studies, such as better photoconversion capabilities and an environmental stage for better maintaining tissues on the stage. MIF-Biotech and the proposed new confocal will move into Weill hall, a $160-million research building now nearing completion. The research community in this new building is highly interdisciplinary and rapidly growing;10-20 new faculty hires are expected in the next several years, the majority of whom will be using the already overburdened MIF-Biotech resources. This instrument will directly benefit 11 central-campus-residing major users, all of whom are principal investigators of NIH-supported research grants. More broadly it would provide new resources for live cell and tissue imaging on campus, enabling researchers to better understand the fundamental molecular mechanisms of cell signaling, vesicle recycling and secretion, cell-matrix interactions and cell-mediated developmental and reproductive processes. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Human diseases are often the result of molecular associations or signaling events that have gone wrong. The instrument requested will allow researchers to investigate these types of molecular mechanisms in live cells on the microscope stage. The major users of this instrument carry out research with implications to a broad spectrum of human health: reproduction and development, cancer biology, cartilage engineering, diabetes and brain function.